Mapjumper

Mapjumper is a Chrome extension to easily jump from one online map provider to another.

Editing OpenStreetMap is addictive. Yet, sometimes I just forget to map a place that I wanted to map when I was there.

Foursquare brought the concept of check-in to the masses. I personally prefer using Gowalla for such activities. For me it seems more visually appealing. Lately, I was even contributing more places to Gowalla than to OpenStreetMap. This is probably because of the game dynamics that Gowalla is bringing to the process. Also the whole design of OpenStreetMap has larger focus on roads.

Mapjumper is a Chrome extension that allows to easily jump from one mapping service to another. I started building it for jumping from Gowalla places to see what is around them. After some time I found that it is useful for two more purposes:

Adding places to OpenStreetMap. Note, that I am not using the information directly, but only like a reminder for myself so that OSM data stays clean.

Reporting correct coordinates to Gowalla team. For this "LatLng Marker" extension from Google Maps Labs is very useful. To my surprise, Gowalla team is very responsive.

In the first version of the extension one could jump only from Gowalla to OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia. Currently, it allows jumping from Gowalla, OpenStreetMap, Google Maps to Wikimapia, OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, MapQuest Open. This makes it very useful for exploring various locations because different map providers have different advantages.

For quick OpenStreetMap editing I prefer using MapQuest Open, because they have Potlatch 2 enabled, and I also like how they show POIs on the map.